When Kingston Czajkowski was growing up in a small town in the New York Catskills, joining the band in 4th grade—where he switched from piano to xylophone—was his only option for playing music in school. But now the first-year Frost School percussion major sees playing in the Frost Wind Ensemble (FWE), with its opportunities for individual expression and adventurous repertoire, as an intensely fulfilling musical experience.
“I love new music,” said Czajkowski during a break from rehearsing for the FWE’s “Light and Reflection” concert this Sunday. “Here everyone has their own musical voice, but we still have to blend, which is really challenging. I love that.”
Orchestras have centuries of musical history and great classical composers. Marching bands have the physical pizzazz and the glamour of sports. But for countless American communities, schools, and young musicians, wind and concert bands are their first and sometimes only live musical medium.
Wind bands, made up of woodwind, brass and percussion instruments, developed from the military and community bands that were among America’s primary forms of live music in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when Western classical music was primarily found in a few cities like New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. They have long been associated with small-town, non-professional entertainment.
But the Frost School’s Wind Ensemble (FWE) is at the forefront of a quiet wave of change that is advancing the musical quality, capacity and image of wind bands. Director of bands Michael Hancock sees the wind band as the equal of any classical ensemble in its complexity, sophistication and expressiveness. Under his leadership, as well as his predecessors Robert Carnochan and Gary Green, the FWE plays a great deal of new and commissioned music by leading composers.
This Sunday’s concert features new works by two Frost School alumni: Kevin Day’s flute concerto “Glimmerglass,” led by professor Jennifer Grim, a renowned flute artist; and Stephen Danyew’s “Fantasia on a Theme of Robert Schumann.” The FWE’s October 4 show included a world premiere by Frost School composer-in-residence James David and a concerto by leading contemporary composer Mason Bates, both written for wind ensemble.
“More and more composers are interested in writing for us,” said Hancock. “In the last 50 years some of the biggest composers are writing for wind ensemble.”
The FWE includes 45 to 50 players, most of whom are graduate students, along with a few exceptional undergraduates.
Hancock, who earned master’s and doctoral degrees in wind conducting at the Frost School, is continuing a tradition of musical innovation and development that goes back to Frederick Fennell, who invented the wind ensemble in the early 1950s while teaching at the Eastman School of Music. Dean Bill Lee brought Fennell to the Frost School in the 1960s as one of the key faculty leaders who would transform the school into a significant and groundbreaking music education institution.
“He was brought here to reshape the large ensembles,” said Hancock. “To rejuvenate them and make them more forward-thinking.”
As the wind ensemble has advanced musically, Hancock says that its qualities have made it more compelling and challenging for composers and musicians alike. The wind ensemble is smaller than an orchestra, without banks of strings playing the same part, giving players greater individual expression and allowing tremendous sonic complexity, coloration, and fluidity in shifting between solo and ensemble.
“A lot of our composers are pushing what’s possible from instrumentalists through the medium of the wind ensemble,” said Hancock, who will lead the FWE at the College Band Directors National Association conference in February, one of just eight bands from across the country to perform. “To get the excitement and color, all the players are expected to be pretty virtuosic."
He is ambitious to expand the ensemble’s possibilities on many levels. “I’m trying to make great art with the students. To give them repertoire that incites their curiosity and empowers their passion for making music together, and continues to draw an audience that would otherwise not know about this music.”
Hancock inspires and challenges students like sophomore Alexander Tanev, a multi-instrumentalist who plays oboe in the FWE and has a playlist of wind ensemble music. “This year he’s very ambitious, with a lot of new works,” Tanev said. “For me as a musician and for the audience, you can’t get any better. “
For William Hurtz, who is getting his master’s in trombone performance, wind band offers an exceptional experience. “The assembly of instruments is really special,” Hurtz said. “It’s a beautiful thing. Unlike an orchestra where the strings all play the same part, a wind ensemble is more individual. It feels like an advanced chamber ensemble in that way. Much of the joy comes from the interaction between the musicians. In a well-written piece, you can hear all these different colors.”
That interaction is beautifully apparent as the FWE rehearses “Mother,” another work on Sunday’s program. It’s a song cycle by Aaron Perrine based on the poetry of Ted Kooser, featuring GRAMMY-winning classical and pop vocalist Hilá Plitmann, who has performed multiple times with the Frost Wind Ensemble. The music reflects the poem’s themes of springtime and the poet’s mother's death.
As the musicians play, the piece swells with a fluid, subtly articulated intricacy, as instrumental solos briefly emerge and merge back into the music’s flow, creating a sense of reflection and quiet yearning.
“Wind band is like an artist’s palette,” said Kevin Joseph, a third-year doctoral student in wind conducting who is Hancock’s teaching assistant. “There’s no other ensemble that provides as many options for different colors and sonorities.”
Joseph played tuba in school bands growing up in New York City and Arizona, where he later taught middle and high school band. That experience has given him a deep appreciation for how the ensemble brings people together through music.
“I always encourage my students to find joy in music,” said Joseph. “Band provided me with a sense of communal understanding of my role as a human, and a deeper understanding of storytelling. Music is a way we tell our stories.”
“Band is the most prevalent musical ensemble in schools, and because of that first interaction, it immediately attracts students to want to make sounds with each other and interact with each other. Many of their parents did [band] themselves growing up. It’s generational.”
If you go:
The Frost Wind Ensemble performs “Light and Reflections” at 4 p.m. on Sunday, November 1 at Gusman Concert Hall, 1314 Miller Dr., Coral Gables.
Tickets are $10 to $20 at events.miami.edu
